Vol. 6, No. 11, 1989

Articles on Jehovah's Witnesses

The cover of the October 15, 1989 issue of The Watchtower posed a question which has plagued mankind since the beginning: "What hope for the dead?" In answering this vital question, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society presented its answer through a discussion of the resurrection. However, the main article was preceded by a brief discussion of a topic on which the Witnesses have written scores of pages: the immortality of the soul!

The Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the soul is "a person or an animal or the life that a person or an animal enjoys," (Reasoning from the Scriptures, p. 375). Thus, the body and the soul are one in the same and when the body dies, so does the soul. The Jehovah's Witnesses adamantly reject the belief that when a person dies their soul survives death and enters another state of existence until it is reunited with the body at a future date. Their book, Let God Be True confirms this when it strongly states, "There is not one Bible text that states the human soul is immortal," (p. 69).

To a large extent, the Witnesses are correct concerning Scriptural support for the immortality of the soul! As Edmond Gruss pointed out in his book, Apostles of Denial, "Scripturally, the attribute of `immortality' is not possessed by any human soul, because `immortality,' when applied to man, relates to the body and will be received in the future when man's body is glorified (I Cor., 15:42, 50, 53,54). Scripture states that only God has immortality (I Tim. 6:16)" (pp. 156-157).

Gruss's statement is supported by numerous Bible scholars including Dallas Roark, author of The Christian Faith who states, "Life after death in the biblical sense demands the resurrection concept rather than the immortality of the soul concept. The Bible does not speak of the immortality of the soul. It does teach the resurrection of the body," (p. 324).

However, both of these men do clearly point out that whereas the Scripture may not support "the immortality of the soul," it does strongly support that "man, once created, does possess a quality (soul or spirit) which can exist as a conscious entity apart from the body and which will continue in its existence through all eternity," (Apostles of Denial, p. 157). For example in Matthew 10:28, Jesus said, "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell," (emphasis mine). Note the word "both" emphasizing that the body and soul are two distinct entities and one can kill the body without destroying the soul.

Another key passage is Revelation 6:9 in which John says, "And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the alter the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held." It is important to understand when reading this verse that these are the souls of martyrs who are very conscious and very much in God's presence though their physical bodies are dead.

Other important verses which support this key tenet of the Christian faith are Luke 16:19-31; 2 Cor. 5:8; Phil. 1:23, and Hebrews 12:23. Thus, while immortality only refers to God and man's body, the Word of God clearly teaches that upon death, we continue to exist in a conscious state either with the Lord or in hell.